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Clippers Center Ivica Zubac Admits He's a 'Hater' When He Watches Other West Teams

Los Angeles is battling for postseason position.

Josh Wilson

The Clippers hold the seventh seed after Friday's results
The Clippers hold the seventh seed after Friday's results / Ivica Zubac
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Some NBA players might suggest they don't look at scores or watch other games when the season is coming down to the wire. It's a noble perspective to claim that the only thing that matters is your own performance. And in the end, yes, if you can win your games, you generally don't have to worry as much about what your opponents are doing.

But let's be real: Scoreboard and standings watching is part of the strategy when the season's schedule is coming closer to its conclusion.

Los Angeles Clippers center Ivica Zubac admitted he watches it all, and described himself as a "hater" when he's looking at other teams vying for some of the final postseason slots in the Western Conference.

Here's video of him talking about that, shared by Joey Linn who covers the Clippers for On SI.

Los Angeles is currently a game out of skipping the play-in tournament, but if the season were to end today, the Clippers would have the best positioning in the tournament as the seventh seed (the seven- and eight-seed needs to win just one game to advance to the playoffs, and can lose once and still have a chance to get in). They're 6.5 games ahead of the last team that would make the play-in tournament, the 10th-seeded Phoenix Suns.

Hate-watch away, Zubac.

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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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